Donald Trump Goes to War Against Universally Hated Paper Straws
The White House's new executive order halts federal purchases of paper straws and calls for the creation of a national anti–paper straw strategy.

Plastic straw partisans are now on the offensive in the straw wars.
Monday evening, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to halt their purchases of paper straws and ordering the creation of a nationwide strategy to end their use.
"An irrational campaign against plastic straws has resulted in major cities, States, and businesses banning the use or automatic inclusion of plastic straws with beverages," reads the White House order.
Those plastic straws were replaced with paper straws that the White House order says are "nonfunctional, use chemicals that may carry risks to human health, are more expensive to produce than plastic straws, and often force users to use multiple straws."
Anti–plastic straw policies started appearing in the early 2010s and really took off toward the end of the decade when large blue cities and a few states either banned their distribution or restricted their use in restaurants, bars, and other public settings.
These policies were a direct descendant of cities' and states' plastic bag bans and taxes. They were spurred along in the public imagination by the viral statistic (originally debunked by Reason) that Americans use 500 million plastic straws a day.
That figure was a rough guesstimate produced by then-9-year-old Milo Cress. More precise industry estimates put Americans' daily plastic straw use at around 170 million to 330 million.
Even Cress' top-end estimate wouldn't seem to rank plastic straws as a serious environmental concern. Litter surveys consistently showed plastic straws as a tiny share of plastic waste. Studies estimated America's share of global marine plastic waste at less than 1 percent.
Nevertheless, the straw banners persisted with their prohibitions on the argument that plastic straws were a "gateway plastic." Once the ubiquitous product was banned, people would wake up to all the other forms of single-use plastics that could be eliminated from their lives.
The reverse happened. Instead of being won over to the cause of eliminating more plastic waste, people got irritated at busybody laws that took away a common convenience.
Quickly plastic straw bans became a symbol of liberal government's petty excesses. The plastic straw itself was rebranded as a symbol of heroic resistance to the nanny state.
When I interviewed Cress in 2018, he presciently criticized plastic straw bans because of the backlash they would likely engender.
Even politicians who supported plastic straw bans acknowledged the inferiority of paper alternatives. Witness Kamala Harris' comments during a 2019 CNN town hall event where she inarticulately criticized paper straws while calling for plastic ones to be banned.
In 2020, the Trump campaign went all in on plastic straws, selling Trump-branded plastic straw merch.
In office, the Biden administration refrained from launching a national war on plastic straws. But Joe Biden's various executive orders did create a nationwide strategy for combating plastic pollution and directed federal agencies to reduce their own use of single-use plastic products.
But the energy that animated plastic straw banners on the left was clearly waning. The nationwide "vibe shift" saw Harris walk back her past support of plastic straw bans once she was on the top of the Democratic ticket in 2024.
The White House's latest executive order calls for a national strategy to end the use of paper straws to be created within 45 days.
That will include, as mentioned, barring federal agencies from purchasing paper straws or discriminating against the use of plastic straws.
It also calls for the strategy to address "contract policies and terms with entities, including States, that ban or penalize plastic straw purchase or use" and "all other available tools to achieve the policy of this order nationwide."
Will this result in its own form of federal pro–plastic straw overreach? We'll have to wait and see the details of the national anti–paper straw strategy to know.
It's certainly within the federal government's power to condition grants and funding on grantees adopting particular policies, including around plastic straws.
Nevertheless, a policy that tells all recipients of federal funds that they can't use paper straws anywhere within their organizations could also end up becoming another cumbersome and unnecessary federal intrusion.
At the end of the day, paper straws are a problem that solves itself.
Americans are a convenience-loving people. Plastic straw bans' attack on that convenience created a backlash that ultimately defeated the straw panic. With that moral emergency now defeated, and federal mandates in abeyance, it seems likely that entities that once went all in on paper straws will sheepishly swap them out in favor of superior plastic alternatives.
Rent Free is a weekly newsletter from Christian Britschgi on urbanism and the fight for less regulation, more housing, more property rights, and more freedom in America's cities.
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Goddamn buffoons “both sides” everything.
Do you really think Biden foregoes plastic straws ???
I have a family member who dined at the White House and had presidents calling at home and Pres coming to house for dinner --- and you are in another galaxy
Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were spotted carrying plastic bags during a recent grocery store run.
Harris, 60, who previously advocated for banning plastic straws during her first unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2019, was seen at the 99 Ranch Market Asian Grocery store in Westwood, California on Thursday.
Don't stop at banning paper straws. Now also ban those blinding LED bulbs and bring back incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. Also bring back hair spray with chlorofluorocarbons and dishwasher detergent with phosphates. Trump has said that hair spray hasn't been the same since the chlorofluorocarbon propellants were removed, so maybe we have a chance to get them back.
Those LEDs make me look orange.
that should make you happy
So maybe this time he is draining the swamp or lowering the cost of eggs ? No ? 4 more years of failed promises ?
Fine, just chalk it up to Mexico paying for the wall & bringing coal back.
Maybe Trump can resurrect the 100 million chickens uncle Joe murdered.
Can't wait to see what dirt DOGE finds hiding in the USDA. My guess is that it isn't just soil.
I can't find it now, But there are pictures of Tom Vilsack in a giant chicken costume. He was often criticized for being a lightweight
That would end badly. Haven't you seen Pet Sematery?
So maybe this time you could find a second brain-cell, steaming pile of lefty shit?
Fuck off and die, asshole.
Reusable metal straws.
Disposable individually plastic wrapped straw cleaners.
The plastic wrapped paper straws were best.
I'm willing to settle for disposable glass straws.
You go ahead and crack your teeth and cut your gums on metal straws.
Or drink like a man.
You mean those reusable metal straws that were almost impossible to clean, got people sick, were regularly stabbed through people's heads so often that they were recalled as a safety risk, had to be forbidden in some schools because they kept setting off the metal detectors and require so much energy to produce and clean that the CO2 payback is negative? Those metal straws?
Especially those nasty black assault straws.
I still see them for sale. You can also still shove them up turtle noses, just like the plastic ones.
Yeah, the ones that Mark Cuban went ga-ga over on "Shark Tank?"
Honestly there once was a time when Americans would've identified and solved problems as entrepreneurs. Not by forcing government to identify and solve problems.
The West Wing plans to signal Trump's commitment by cancelling the annual egg roll and having the children kneel down with commemorative straws to drain the White House lawn.
Here comes the gimp to deliver his Actblue talking points!
Good boy!
You misspelled "steaming pile of lefty shit".
Most plastic straws are made in China, such as the common sizes of Dixie (Georgia-Pacific) red straws provided at convenience stores. So, with every additional plastic straw used under this new Policy, China will be paying for most of our straws as well as making America rich from all of that additional tariff revenue.
Did you all get the same retarded talking point sheet today?
No, I just worked in a convenience store and loaded up the straw supply near the soda fountain dispenser. I'm not saying that the Dixie is a bad straw at all, it is one of the best. It can be bent and twisted without breaking or splitting.
Briefly during the pandemic, the manufacturing of the Georgia-Pacific straws used in convenience stores moved to Vietnam, but later it went back to China. It might have gone back to Vietnam now to avoid the tariffs. Someone needs to check on that.
Be kind to the retard. He can’t help it
We need to slap a 1000% percent tariff on Chinese straws so domestic producers can price gouge.
So? NOt very Libertarian of you to reject Competitive Advantage.
WHile we advance AI they make straws. All for it See Vance's speech the other day.
The 9 year old was a lot closer than I expected.
Aside from federal purchases, how is this a federal issue? What standing does Trump have to challenge local straw policies?
Commerce clause? Isn't that the catch all excuse?
Commerce clause is a legislative assertion of power, not executive. That said, congress has delegated away so much of its legislative authority that there probably is some law somewhere granting some executive agency authority to tamper here.
The best answer would be to slash back the commerce clause to its original purpose - preventing tariffs and other economic gamesmanship between the 50 states. But that's unlikely to happen in the lifetime of anyone here. Second best would be for Congress to start repealing or obsoleting their over-delegations of authority.
Demonizing plastic straws was irrational. Demonizing paper straws is also irrational. Government ought to get out of this dispute entirely.
A nasty juvenille logic/debate error to stigmatize every opinion about straws as pollitical !!!!!
What kind of straw did Hunter use in the White House?
I figured he did it straight off the hookers ass, like a real man.
Rolled up $100
Typical Trump and his straw man attacks.
It really sucks.
People who use straws suck.
Yes, banning plastic straws is stupid. But it's hard to see how paper straws could contain more risky chemicals than plastic ones. And I have no problem using the current generation of "paper" straws (really more like cardboard) used in places like McDonald's. What their relative costs are, I don't know. Current paper straws are wider than most plastic ones, since they need to be less sharply curved in order to stand up the pressures applied to them by being thrust through (plastic) drink lids, and between ice cubes. It would be ironic if we now wind up with wider plastic straws, because people like both the plastic material and the extra width of the current paper straws.
You act as if paper grows on trees or something.
When I read that you really have no problem with paper straws used at McDonalds my first reaction was that you're an idiot. It was a visceral reaction triggered by my visceral hatred of creating paper- mache spit wads when I try to drink a bloody coke from the drive thru!
> a national anti–paper straw strategy
How is this reducing the size and scope of the Federal government?
If there's a Federal law mandating paper straws, repeal it. Otherwise this is just another layer of gravy on the pork butt that is the Federal government.
Let the market decide!
The last few times I have received paper straws, I have been pleasantly surprised by how well they work. Way better than the wimpy paper straws I grew-up with in the 1960s.
I'm waiting for the label law people to ban "straws" that aren't the stalks of cereal plants.
I wonder if that's where Jeffy works.
Remember the goofy way paper straws were used 60 years ago: stuck into soda bottles they barely, or didn't even, reach the bottom of, when it was easier to suck directly from the bottle's neck? And how then they'd break off into the bottle?
Hardly a problem worthy of presidential attention.
This is trivia. A waste of time.
Maybe flooding the zone, while skulduggery goes on elsewhere.
While you are at it…end the bans on plastic grocery bags too!